


Everything That Rises Must Converge

by cruisedirector



Category: Dead Zone
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Closeted Character, Coma, Community: contrelamontre, Confusion, Desire, Honor, Infidelity, Love Triangles, Multi, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, Police, Telepathy, Touching, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-01-21
Updated: 2003-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 08:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Johnny Smith touches a dying man's hand, he can read all his secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything That Rises Must Converge

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Ascent." Written for the contrelamontre touch challenge, within the hour time limit though it would have been a lot better with a second pass. Stephen King, Michael and Shawn Piller, USA Network and a host of other people own the characters, not me.

Walt Bannerman lies in a coma, just as Johnny did when Walt stole his life away. Beneath his passive skin lie all his secrets. Johnny needs only to touch Walt, and Walt's life can become his own.

First contact. Walt's fingers lie lax and clammy in Johnny's, yet they sear him like fire -- not even Greg Stillson made him burn like this. Inside Walt's memories, Walt's body, he sees Sarah as if for the first time. He feels Walt's sweat prickle his armpits, feels Walt's pants tighten across his lap as he watches the woman they both love. The pins that dot Walt's uniform prod uncomfortably into his skin.

"Johnny woke up," Sarah tells Walt. Johnny bites down on the inside of Walt's cheek because he will not cry out his frustration, not in front of her. He tastes blood in his mouth, savors the sharp jagged pain of the cut that distracts him from the worse ache -- the knowledge that she loves another, always will. Let her go, the old man tells him, and the light burns his eyes.

Everything seems flat when Johnny awakens, dull after that brilliant glow. Sarah's red-eyed mourning dims her beauty. Johnny can't bear the thought of touching her, learning what she might be feeling. He remembers making love to her, as himself and as Walt, but now it feels like clutching at a ghost. He doesn't want Sarah. He wants to go back to Walt, to the icy fingers and the searing light that contain his own life.

Inside, Walt is stronger, and Johnny makes the astonishing discovery: Walt doesn't hate him. Walt remembers standing at his side, touching him. Somewhere back in the real world, dying in a hospital bed, Johnny is clutching Walt's hand and remembers too how handsome Walt is, how gentle with his son. How much he has allowed Johnny to enter their lives, to touch them.

Now Walt wants only to go to the light, to sacrifice himself, to avoid the pain of watching Sarah torn between the two men. Guilt like bile rises in Johnny's throat; he understands Walt's suffering but not his choice. Why would Walt leave like this, without fighting for Sarah and J.J.? How can he consider this an act of love for his family?

Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps Johnny has misread Walt ever since he came back. There was an alternate future once where Sarah was Johnny's wife, where she tried to find a date for Walt who was always so awkward with women. Johnny had had a thought about Walt then, put away ever since in a box like the ring he gave Sarah so long ago. His own road is one less traveled by, but Walt sticks to the straight and narrow. It's what he thinks he's supposed to do. Good sheriff, good family man, good boy.

What if Sarah hadn't been there, giving Walt a ready-made family, orienting him along the path he thought he was supposed to follow?

Johnny finds Walt at the police station, hands pressed to the solid wood of the desk he loves, the office he loves. But it's not enough, and may never be enough again. Walt expects Sarah's betrayal -- he saw her holding Johnny's ring. Yet he trusts Johnny. Believes in his honor, his friendship. His life is an open book through Johnny's touch, yet Walt can't see.

I slept with your wife, Johnny tells him.

As if waking from a dream, Walt hits him. The first slap feels like release. Light explodes behind Johnny's eyes. He struggles with Walt, fights to find the dark places, the hidden pain -- pulse pounding his fingers in hot hard bursts when he grabs a wrist, the raw sensuality of calloused fingers gripping his skin. The filth of the air in the mine, the sharpness of falling rock...reaching out to Walt, taking his hand to pull him to his feet. Finally seeing everything in that touch.

Awake, chest burning from electrical shocks, a slow fire sears Johnny's throat as he watches Sarah with her husband. She looks the same -- the childhood sweetheart, the Madonna. It's Walt who makes him look away.

I've been having some amazing dreams about you, Walt tells him as he's leaving. When Johnny says that sometimes happens with coma patients, Sarah looks from one to the other. She's outside their experience, their encounter. For a split second Johnny thinks he sees envy in her eyes. But he doesn't touch her, and when she asks him to join her and Walt for dinner, he declines.

Sooner or later, they will both come to him, together or separately. And he will let them because his life is in their hands, both the life he has and the life he lost. He feels it as surely as he feels the holocaust in Stillson and the blood corroding his stepfather. He has touched Walt; now he can taste the hunger.


End file.
